TorrentFreak

This morning German police confiscated the servers of the Pirate Party, currently the sixth largest political party in Germany. Details of the raid are still scarce, but initial information indicates that the raid was targeted at a service running on the Party’s servers. The timing is unfortunate with the Pirate Party participating in the upcoming election in Bremen this Sunday.

Most major music and movie industry outfits go out guns blazing against those who dare to copy their content. They often label these people, who also make up a great portion of their legitimate customers, as thieves and criminals. App developer and owner of the website Word of the Day decided to take another route, and crushed a potential pirate with politeness instead.

During the last couple of weeks a heated debate has sprung up around the claimed massive music piracy of a relatively unknown band. One Soul Thrust currently have just 176 followers on Twitter yet according to their manager the group is being destroyed by the pirating masses who have, to date, downloaded their debut album 100,000 times. With the CRIA apparently supporting the band’s position, it’s time to investigate.

The “piracy is stealing” argument raises its head in the media every week and is on the lips of anti-piracy outfits and copyright holders every day. To them, every unauthorized copy is a lost sale and another small dent in the company spreadsheet which, when added to a million others, will destroy it bit by bit. To the maker of Minecraft, however, its an opportunity. Piracy is theft? You must be kidding. Lost sales? They don’t exist.

Following the publication of a paper which investigates how using the same username across multiple web sites may expose Internet users to scammers, TorrentFreak decided to apply the same research idea to a random sampling of file-sharers, with some eye-opening results.

Next month the long-awaited Crysis 2 is due for release but perhaps inevitably it’s already been leaked onto the Internet. Although it’s a PC beta version which requires some coaxing to perform, publisher EA has already decried this unofficial release and some gaming blogs have gone into overdrive condemning ‘evil pirates’. But hey, let’s all cool down for a second. Just because people can pirate, doesn’t mean they always do.

Twitter is an excellent medium for world leaders to keep the people informed on their thoughts and actions, but it can also lead to awkward situations. Yesterday evening the Turkish President Abdullah Gül tweeted that he enjoyed watching the Oscar nominated movie ‘The King’s Speech’ at home with his wife. An interesting status update, since the film has not premiered in Turkish theaters yet, nor is it available on DVD anywhere else.